Shelter
by tinypennyrolling
Summary: A story of fire and ice and rage, and how two people can be together in their solitude. Katniss and Peeta; post mockinjay, before the epilogue.
1. Fire

**CHAPTER 1: ****_Fire_**

_"Peeta.."_

_"Yes?"_

_"How long are you going to love me?"_

_He gets up of the floor, leaving his book behind, and make his way to her bed. She narrows her eyes at him, trying her best to focus on his answer and not drift into sleep._

_The bed feels warmer the second he slips inside her blanket too. _

_"I will love you -" He pauses to place a soft kiss on the crook of her neck. "Until the very end of me"._

_Katniss smile against her pillow, determinated to win this how-long game. "Ask me, then"._

_"How long are _you _going to love me?"_

_"Forever"_

_He chuckles. "You can't promise that_"

"_Yes, I do". She turns around and bury her face in his chest. "We will stay here forever"._

_"Like this?"_

_"Uh-hum" And she does. She doesn't want to get up ever again, with her face buried in his chest and his head on the crook of her neck. Just the perfect way to be._

_"Okay". _

_His lips touch her temple softly, and she slowly give up on her heavy eyelids. Sleep is so much easier that way._

When she wakes up, he isn't there. He has never been there, she realizes. Her mind is playing tricks on her again, as usual.

There's no Peeta on her bed, there's no Peeta anywhere close to her enough.

Her hair is braided, but she's not leaving the house. It has been days since she last hunted or even eated. Despite Greasy Sae efforts to put food into her mouth, she will pretend to do it and then throw up later. In her mind, this is a great punishment. It would be easier to die this way, at least it won't hurt much.

Everyday she faces that knife, hidden inside the nightstand right next to her bed. It calls her, scream her name.

She doesn't dare to touch it. Not quite yet. _Only if everything else fails._

The truth is, she is afraid. She fears death, even after all the ones she faced. Blood and screamings and pain scare her, and she wants to be carried away into darkness, simply like that - as falling asleep with Peeta.

_Oh, if Peeta was here. _

He would comfort her. He would make this wishes go away, even if briefly. His warm arms would make her feel safe. The Peeta she knew would make her life colorful again, out of this gray illusion.

But the Peeta she knew is no longer him.

The Peeta she loved rests deep in a soul she no longer recognize. He is now a shell, a shell of someone who loved her.

A shell of someone she loved.

Not anymore.

In fact, everyone whose Katniss's heart belonged to are long gone. That is, everyone she loved somehow disappeared. Something tells her they are just waiting for her to join them. The darkness where Prim rests. Where Cinna, and Madge, and her dad rests.

The darkness that her Peeta rests, the true Peeta. Not the false one.

And there is this part of her, too small to be noticed, that wants to belive she can bring out at least of them. There is still hope for _him. If I could only reach him._

She puts her socks on, her feet freezing, and drags herself to the toilet. The mirror is half broken, as she threw a boot on it once for showing her face when she didn't want to. The cold water from the sink doesn't help.

When she sneezes, everything on her hurts. Her back isn't the same anymore, even if her ID shows only nineteen years old.

Her attempts to laugh about the irony of feeling old at nineteen only makes her back hurt more.

_I could use Peeta's back massage now._

And it saddens her that she can't.

She goes back to bed.

* * *

Days passes, then weeks. Months.

It's spring. Katniss looks through her bedroom window to her dead garden.

_Even the flowers gave up._

_Haymitch's garden looks better than mine, and they are probably soaked in some kind of alcohol._

She makes her best to put on some trousers and leave her bedroom. The stairs look a lot more longer than they were last time she got downstairs, and the floor feels weird.

_Just like when you spend your whole day on high heels and finally put your bare feet on the ground. _

_Ha. Like if I have been using anything but my socks these days._

Her house is pretty clean, so she concludes this is Greasy Sae work too. Clean, but empty. There is too much space for her alone here.

She sighs. _Too much space for me to be alone at all. _

When she opens the door, the light almost get her blind. God, since when the sun brighted that much? It annoys and thrills her at the same time.

Katniss sits on the sun, on a bench she had forgotten her house had. It feels warm, quite good.

She close her eyes shut and tilt her head back, letting the sunshines flow through her, and the corner of her lips lift only a little, in almost imperceptable smile.

_Because it's no longer winter. _

Her memories of sunny days come back, one by one. _The time her dad took her to swim in the lake and she forgot to put on sunblocker, and got red as a tomato. That time Prim and her danced together on the first day of spring years ago. Her mother and father laughing of them._

_That time Gale told her a dirty joke and she kicked him out of the tree, and spent the day laughing quietly about both things._

_The day she spent with Peeta in the roof, before they went back to the arena in the Quarter Quell._

It was going to be a good day. At least not as bad as her days has been, locked on her bedroom, depressed and sad, but too tired to cry. She ran out of tears.

Unitll Haymitch sits right next to her, in a proximity she doesn't particulary enjoy.

"Hello, you". She opens her eyes at his voice, sounding sober. Sober? That's rare.

"Hi".

"God, Katniss. You look awful"

She doesn't respond. He sighs.

"How long since the last time you eated?"

She doesn't answer again, this time because she lost count of the days she spent with her mouth shut, pretending to Greasy Sae that her food was good. In fact, it tasted like ashes.

Everything in her life, she noticed, taste or look like ashes.

"You can't stay like that. You are going to die if you do so".

She shrugs.

"Listen, sweethart, I'm serious here. You really can't –"

"Leave me alone, please". She doesn't even bother to look at him, and that pisses the old man off. Haymitch gets up and throw his hands up.

"Whatever then, I won't be your baby-sitter, but the _least_ you could do is help yourself. Just because they all died, doesn't mean you did too".

A sudden desire to run and hide shoves her. How dare he talk about all the ones that died? She gets on her feet too.

"What do you want me to do, then?" She spits.

He chuckles ironically. "Start by feeding yourself, huh? Then maybe, just maybe, if you be a good girl and stay alive, I can tell you a secret".

She waves her hand at him, turning around, attempting to go back to her bed and sleep the rest of the day out. Before she can get too far, though, Haymitch shouts to her something that makes her freeze in place.

"He is coming home, Katniss".

She turns to see if he is joking.

He's not.

_What is that suppose to mean? Is Peeta coming back? To District 12?_

He seems to capture her thoughts, because he nods and repeat.

"Yep. Peeta is returning".

She feels worse than ever. Her stomach flips and her head spins.

Haymitch smiles at her, and she try her best to do so, but it won't come out.

Who is coming home? Peeta or _her _Peeta?

_He forgot me. He isn't mine anymore_

_He no longer loves me. He hates me._

So, as if it was the most reasonable thing to do, she runs upstairs and lock herself in her bedroom, taking her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth in her cries.

Somehow the tears managed to come back.

* * *

The next days, she remains locked inside the house. Greasy Sae keeps her distance. Haymitch doesn't bother her either.

She stops sleeping. Not even her nightmares or stupid dreams show up.

Katniss world is empty.

She hates it and hates him and hates herself. She hates that he left her alone in this. She hates that everyone left her.

She hates that she eventually left herself too.

The sun no longers catch her once olive skin – she is now pale. She closed the curtains, but peeks through if all the time, anxious, waiting for something to happen. _Anything. If I could see.._

Well, she doesn't know what she is expecting to see.

Untill she sees it.

There it is, the smoke going out of his chimney.

The first thing she sees about him in months is nothing more, nothing less than ashes. _Oh, the irony. _

Her heart beat faster and faster, and she's so weak now that she fears it will stop beating at all.

_Boom._

_Boom._

_Boom._

Her hands grip the curtains so she can keep her balance.

_Boom. _

_Peeta. He is here. _

_Boom. Boom. Boom._

She wonders how the hell her feet remember how to run that fast. Last time she did, there were mutts and killers and bombs after her. At this moment, the only thing after her are regrets.

Her robe falls to her ankles and she let her socks somewhere at the way. In seconds, she is already under the hot steamy water of her shower.

It burns at first, but in a good way. At least she feels it.

Katniss back hits the cold bathroom's wall and she sinks into her knees.

_When he was away I wanted him to be here._

_Now here is here and I want him to go. _

She gets mad at herself and tilt her head back, hitting the wall with such a strength she growls.

What pisses her off the most is the fact that she wants him back. She wants him in a selfish way only _she _could afford to have. She wants him in her bed, but only when its convenient. She wants his arms around her, but only because her nightmares goes away. She wants his massages, his cheesebuns, she wants him because he makes her feel confortable. At least more confortable than alone.

And she is pretty sure that she is not in the position to be selfish anymore. Not with him, not with anyone. And it really, really gets her mad.

The water keeps falling on her for what looks like hours. _Maybe it has been hour, after all. _But it's too warm, too cozy for her to leave. All the time her hands are gripping tuffs of her hair so hard they could easily go out, if she put a little more strength on it. Her legs shake, badly. Her back hurts. Her scars marking every single part of her body, as a sadist _note_ the Capitol wanted her to have.

_"Don't forget: This one was when you fell of that tree on the first Games._

_This little one her were when Clove's knife touched your skin, lightly._

_That is from the bombing._

_This bruises here, oh, they are from the day you ran to him. He did it to you._

_Peeta hurted you."_

It is true, he hurted her, but not like that - or at least not much. He hurted her in the moment his eyes got darker. His blue, deep blue eyes got stormy, darker. He wasn't her sweet boy with the bread anymore. That was one of her worsts scars. The memory of him, not being him.

_"I must have loved you a lot", he said._

_"You did."_

Overthinking all that scars inside and outside her skin, she realizes that, matter-o-factly, he hurted her because she hurted him in the first place.

His hijacking, the torture and mental disorder he walked through only happened because of her.

One more soul damaged because of the mockinjay.

_I don't want to be the mockinjay. _

_Never again._

**_A/N: Hello! This is the first chapter of a (kind of) short story that popped up in my mind at some point of the dawn. I will alternate between the characters point of view, each chapter will be focused in one of them. This one was Katniss, next is Peeta's. _**

**_I hope you liked it. _**

**_Please review!_**


	2. Ice

**CHAPTER 2: _Ice_**

As Peeta opens his house's front door and steps in, he feels the emptiness hit him. It smells like it has been closed for a thousand years , or even more – nothing like home, he thinks.

Home smelled like bread and flour and felt like happiness.

They say home is where the heart is, but he is not sure where his heart is anymore. He had, for a long time, find that place. It was where he wanted to be, since he can remember. Now his mind managed to confuse him enough to make it disappear from his memory, and everytime he tried to remember it hurted.

It hurted because his good memories and bad memories were mixed in a way he can no longer distinguish from real and not real.

He tries, though.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it just doesn't. He looses it.

He place his bags on the floor near the couch and lights up the fireplace. After a quick view of his own house, as if he had forget it (and in fact he did), he throws himself in the sofa and close his eyes.

Not to sleep – he doesn't sleep easily any longer – but because his eyelids feel heavy and his mood is no better than his tired face.

The cracks that the fire makes reminds him of her.

Her, the one person he trusted his heart to.

Her, who kept him alive.

Her, who made him suffer and scream and bleed.

Her, who is just next door, hiding in the shadows like him.

_So close, yet so far. _

_Maybe it's for the best. _

He feels like they both were strangers who knew everything about each other, two parts of one human being – separated by a wall they built with the time. A wall so big he can't even think about climbing, once the fall would be too harmful and they would both fail.

They both would always fail, they said.

Sometimes he believed them.

He wanted her next to him, and at the same time he didn't.

He didn't want her near when his mind played tricks on him and showed him memories he couldn't tell if happened or not. He didn't want her near when he remembered the tall, masked men that hit him over and over again; or the feeling of his arms hanging for hours in a chain locked to the roof, supporting his whole body weight; or when they electrocuted him under his nails and over his eyelashes and made him spend days without food.

He didn't want her near because they said him not to.

And that's why his mind is so full of a rage he didn't see grow in there. He gets angry easily, looses control of himself.

His house doesn't look like home, neither does his own body.

What bothers him the most is that, despite all his hate, a (not so small) part of him still loves her. And it loves her with every strength he can gets.

He loves her and hates her and hates himself.

And it all results in a horrible feeling of being disappearing. Like if his existence is slowly erasing itself from the universe.

He fears that one day he will be gone completely.

* * *

Sometimes he paints. All those therapists told him to, so he tries. But he finds it hard to put anything on the canvas that doesn't look like his own nightmares, a lot of gray and black mixed together in a disgusting view of solitude.

That's all Peeta feels.

Loneliness.

Haymitch brings him a lot of useless stuff that may cheer him up, as flour and confetti and pans.

They don't.

"Those cupcakes aren't going to bake themselvs alone, right?", says the old man, joining him in his kitchen table for breakfest.

Peeta doesn't takes his eyes off the food.

"Peeta. You can talk to me, you know".

"I've got nothing to say".

Haymitch raises his eyebrows. Peeta's words are famous for convincing crowds on his favour, making a simple phrase sound beautiful. And he got nothing to say.

"I doubt that".

He picks at his food.

"Well, if you are not talking, then I am speaking. And you have to listen. How bad is that, huh?"

Peeta doesn't even chuckle. Not a smile. Haymitch sighs.

"Ok, then. You have been here locked for four days now. The girl is locked for months. I'm not spending my last few days of life watching you both sink into yourselvs and die. Oh, please. I'm getting old and tired of this drama. Just go talk to her!"

He raises his eyes to meet his mentor's ones. Thats the first time he mentions Katniss and the thought of her makes him chill.

"I can't".

_Not yet._

"Yes you do! Look, boy, everybody here is somehow damaged and hurted and blablablah. Or you go talk to her and fix this thing you two have or you will end up like me. Old, alone and drunk – taking care of two stubborn kids".

Peeta shakes his head. _No._

"I'm not ready, Haymitch. I can't approach her like this after all I did. No. I need more time".

"Well, I think you both had time enough".

They stay in silence for a long while, eyes focused on the boring rout their forks make from the plate to their mouths.

_This tastes like burnt bread. The kind of bread we used to throw away._

Peeta gets up and put his dishes on the sink, wich is a bit full since he doesn't clean up all the time anymore.

"Katniss is dying, I can see that".

It hits him like a slap on the face, mostly because Haymitch sounds so serious and worried and nothing like Haymitch would sound that it really scares him; but he doesn't turn around.

"And she will die for real if you don't do anything. She won't let me or Sae help, either. If you can't reach her, I don't know who can".

_She is out of my reach for a long time now. _

That day, after Haymitch left, he got upstairs and painted her.

The first time without blood and shadows – just her. Her and her beautiful gray eyes and her braided hair.

He did it in an attempt to get his mind rid of thoughts of her.

It didn't work.

He hid the paint.

* * *

Each day when he woke up, he would look to Katniss house and imagine what she was doing there, with all doors and windows closed. He wonders if she is dead already, and prays that she's not.

He doesn't find courage to go there himself check.

Peeta visits a new therapist, since doctor Aurelius and his nurses stood at 13. His name is Reane Fence. He can't bring himself to trust doctor Fence enough yet, so he hides the fact that his nightmares got worse since he came back.

Reane says he should talk to Katniss too.

He promises he will. He doesn't.

On the second week there, the solitude starts to eat him from the inside. Sometimes he sees his dad on the kitchen, or his brothers sitting at the sofa or his mother brushing her hair at the bathroom mirror.

The second he blinks, they are gone.

Peeta doesn't cry that easily. Instead, he hold onto things untill they break. The first thing was a glass – Greasy Sae took care of his hand. The last was one of his paints – an old sunset.

His worst episodes happens in the middle of the night, when he finally gets to sleep, but he wakes up out of himself. Many times he found himself standing on Katniss porch with a knife.

He then threw all the knifes away.

It was much easy when he got all those psychologists telling him "real" or "not real"; or Delly's kind words about how he was going to be ok. They all said him that he only needed time. _How much time?_

He watches the tapes of him and her and all those tributes who died. He watches the recorded news of the war and the interviews he had with Caeser Flickerman. He keeps returning the tape to the same spots: The cave.

The kiss in the snow at the start of the Victor Tour.

The beach at the second Quarter Quell.

They all seem to make him momentarily happy for a time, untill they don't.

Until watching them makes him even more sad, more lonely. Since that happened, he never dares to turn on the TV again.

Neither does he reads books. Not that he doesn't want to, reading was always a escape valve for him; but because he can't focus on the story and his mind drifts away in the first few lines.

* * *

Peeta discovers a new hobby, one that can't reflect his emptiness by shades of gray or black: gardening. Maybe for Haymitch's insistence that he should do anything at least to move his ass off the couch.

He uses his bakery apron to deal with the land and his gloves to touch the plants, since the touch of his hands seem to make them weak – his grip on things got rough with time.

Sometimes he can feel her eyes on him while he works. It sends chills down his spine and makes him want to turn around everytime; but when he does, her curtain is already closed.

One day he finally gets the courage to call the Capitol and order for seeds.

_Funny how I can call the capitol itself, but not Katniss._

They are delivered in one day. When he opened the cardboard box to get the seeds packages, he honestly thought they were playing a sick joke on him.

_Sunflower's seeds. _

_Violet's seeds._

_Gillyflower's seeds._

_Primrose's seeds._

Sick joke, indeed.

He plants them all, except for the primroses ones. _No, these are her's. _

It's on his the third week home that he decides to do something. Despite his episodes and panic attacks and nights spent awake only for the thought of her, he has to know if she's at least herself.

He finds it a bit selfish of her to lock herself that way, after all the people who died for her to be alive, but he tries to keep this thought away too.

He inhales deeply while grabbing his box of gardening equipment, the primroses seeds safe inside.

_Now or never. _A part of him feels safer saying never, but he doesn't want to pay attention to it. Each step closer he gets to her house, the more he regrets.

_I can't comeback now._

He knocks on her door and nothing happens.

Again.

Nothing.

_I shouldn't have come. _

He feels exposed and rejected and is almost returning when she turns the door knob; his heart skips a beat.

She sighs.

"Peeta".

**_A/N: Hello again!_**

**_Thank you for following, favoriting and reviewing this story – it means a lot to me! _**

**_So, this chapter was harder for me to write than Katniss POV's one; probably because I'm used to her personality more. I'm sorry if it's not exactly as good as expected, I promise the next one will be nice. (=_**

**_Please review, so I can know what you guys think of it!_**


	3. Flowers are for the living

**CHAPTER 3: _Flowers are for the living_**

It was something about the way his blonde curls moved with the wind, or they way he holded his breath when he saw her, that made Katniss stand still when she only wanted to run away.

It was something about the way he looked a lot like himself than like the version she was afraid of that made her knees feel like falling to the ground.

She doesn't have anything to say but his name, because he caught her by surprise. Not that she didn't knew he would eventually come to her door step, but she just wasn't expecting it to be so soon.

_So soon, yet so late. _

She gazed into his eyes, and noticed that they were as blue as she could remember them, but not quite the same.

They were older, more tired. _Restless_.

And, mostly, she could see the fear in them. She knew it was rare of him to be afraid, her steady Peeta. _But aren't we all?_

Aren't them all tired and hurted and damaged? He was just as much as she, though a selfish part of her took advantage of the situation to mourn alone.

It bothered her that he would be standing here in front of her when she was confined to her bedroom. She couldn't get how he was even on his feet after all. And that was something Katniss could never accept – being second best. It was childish and stupid, she knew, but one does not have the right to get over his losses before she does.

Part of her just wouldn't care. The other part of her felt confronted. And a tiny, tiny one felt surprised. Surprised by how he could be strong while she was falling apart. A bit of hope – even if really small – grew inside her.

They were both speechless, frozen in place as if a force field was holding them there, for minutes.

_Minutes that felt like hours. _

It took her long enough to realize he was holding a box, full of stuff she didn't recognize at first, sort of embarassed and shy. _Sort of a Peeta way of being embaressed_.

When he opened his mouth to speak, his voice was caught in his throat, and it echoed at her ears in a broken, tired sound.

"Hello, Katniss".

She shifted in her steady position, making her left foot support her body weight as she holded on the door.

She watched carefully, trying not to stare, as he walked his free hand through the back of his head, messing with his own curls.

None of them had nothing else to say, and, even if not sure of her actions, she opened the door a little bit more and stepped back.

"Do you want to come in?"

The look on his face was unreadable. Something between confusion and surprise and fear, mixed together with a strong wish of running away. He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it and nodded at her.

He stepped in so shyly that Katniss considered if he would continue or hide away from her like a child does, behind it's parents legs.

She turned her back to him and sat on the nearest sofa, wrapping her arms around her as if she was cold. He sat too, his hands gripping the box corners too strongly; his eyes glued to the ground.

He was nervous, she could tell.

It took him awhile to say any other word, so she took this time to study him. It was Peeta, after all. Blue eyed, blonde Peeta, who reminded her of her sister for brief moments, like when he was kind and patient, or when he smiled just a bit and his eyes would gleam in a childish way, just like she used to do; her Prim. Her lost, dead Prim.

It was all silence, until he did look at her. Before he could even say something, she was already wondering what in the world it could be. Why he was at her house, in the first place, or what is in the box, or an explanation of why it took him so long to comeback (although she was willing to know the last one more than the others, even if she tried to deny it to herself). She wondered a lot of things, except of what he actually said.

"I'm sorry".

Just that. That and she lost her composure, sinking a little in the couch. This time he sounded so honest, so like he really meant it, that she got even angry at him for being sorry for something she knew that wasn't his fault.

She felt sad, because he was just as broken at her, but he was, as usual, the one apologizing. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

What was he even sorry for? For the Games? Not his fault. For the rebellion? Not his fault, either. For the Quarter Quell, the explosions, his hijacking, h|r scars, the death of his own family, or Prim's? None of the items in that huge list of tragic situations was his fault.

Maybe they were not her fault too, but that she wouldn't afford to think. She can't forget it all and blame the Capitol for everything. A little bit of fault she has in that, yes. But he doesn't.

He only got hurted. _Because of me._

She shook her head, this time her eyes were the ones searching for the ground.

"Don't be sorry".

He gulped and she raised her head to see him playing in a silly way with the hem of one of his long sleeves. He was sad, too.

It was a stupid question in their situation but she did it anyway. And she did it because, somehow, she really wanted to know. Because, if there's anyone that still need her support in this world, it is him.

"How are you, Peeta?"

He smirks a little at her question, too little to anyone who doesn't know him that well even see it. But she does.

"I've been better".

And it's so tragic that it's even funny. So she laughs. "Me too".

But that seems to startle him. And his eyes search for hers, his face serious and worried. "Haymitch said you are not.. well".

She releases a bothered breath. "Haymitch says a lot of things".

"But you aren't, are you? I know it".

She shakes her head at him, because he, too, knows her really well. "No, not really".

He lets go of the box and clasps his hands together, sitting a little forward in the couch opposite to hers. "Let me help. Please".

Her eyes roll before she evens acknowledge them to. "You can't help me in this".

The look in his face is disappointment, and this time he shakes his head and sighs.

He still wants to take care of her, after all this time.

"I do. Please, Katniss", he says, and then looks at her skinny arms; "You need to eat".

She says nothing, but she knows, deep down, that he is right. She is not hungry, but that may also be part of her '_depression', _as some doctors said before she came back home too.

"What's in the box?", she says, and points at it.

Peeta seems to have forgotten about it, so he jumps at the sight of the instruments in his lap.

"Oh. This are.."

She looks at him, waiting for him to go on; and his Adam's apple bobs up and down as he gulps again.

"I have been... gardening"

"I know", and she indeed knows, because she lost count of how many times she caught herself staring at him working on his garden through her window.

"Right. And.. lately, I ordered some seeds and.. there is a package of.. primrose's seeds that... Well, I thought you would like to have them".

Her voice stucks in her throat. _Primrose seeds._ _Primrose seeds for gardening._

She doesn't know how to feel about that. Having Prim planted in her garden is not exactly what she wants, but it's something her sister would like. She used to like flowers. And her garden is already too dead. And she doesn't want to see death wherever she goes anymore. Actually, she does not think too much about it, because if she does she will end up saying no and locking herself again in her bathroom to cry alone. So she says the only thing she can say to him in that moment.

"Okay".

His eyes go wide in surprise. "Okay? You really want me to..?"

"Yes. Okay, Peeta. Plant them".

He smiles.

He smiles and she melts a bit. Because it has been a long while since she last saw him smiling that way. So, as if for impulse, she smiles too. It's not a proper smile like his, but still. She feels like crying, but instead looks out the window because facing him is suddenly hard.

He gets up and leaves, not to his house, but to her front garden. She sits in her porch and watches as Peeta works in the land. The sun hits her eyes and she turns her head to see Haymitch at his porch too. She can't see his face from here, but she swears she can see a smile before he turns away and step inside his house.

* * *

Sitting there, in the porch, with her oversized t-shirt and pants, she realizes she has missed fresh air. And her heart aches when she thinks about the woods, once she doesn't hunt since around five months ago. She is not sure, though, of how many days she has been locked inside, because a minute of solitude feels like a decade. A day in that dark, empty house, without Prim or her mom or even Buttercup, the cat she used to hate and now wonders where the hell it went, is a century of pain and mourn.

She missed the sun. She missed her porch, even, the wooden floor that makes annoying sounds when she steps in it.

Along with all the people she lost, she notices that she can also miss the people who are alive.

She misses Johanna's jokes and Annie's kind smiles and Gale's company and her mom's smell. Mostly, although she tries to deny and hates to admit; she has missed Peeta. Not only him, but him and what he does and how he smells and his attitudes and the way his blue eyes are always blue, always there.

And she knows she can't bring herself to say all those things to him, or to anyone but herself; she knows she can't do anything to fix him or to fix their lives; she can't do anything to bring those who she lost back. All she can do is stare at the garden where primrose's flowers will grow and hope for tomorrow to be better.

Maybe tomorrow will be better, after all.

So, later, when she is eating a cheesebun he baked in the afternoon and offered her; she says "Thank you".

And when he looks at her from his side of the kitchen table, she knows that he knows what she meant. She is not thanking him only for the cheesebun (though it tastes really, really good) or for planting primroses in her garden. She is thanking him for everything he ever did and keeps doing for her.

She thanks him for being him.

That night, she lays down in her bed with a content stomach, full of baked goodies she managed to eat even though she still wasn't hungry.

That night, Peeta felt like a heavy weight has left his shoulders. That night, he sleeps for the first time in months.

She dreams of Prim.

He dreams of her.

**_A/N: Hello, everyone!_**

**_I am so, so sorry for taking so long to update the story. I was travelling (trying to make the best of my short hollidays, if possible) and spent almost a month out of my country. As soon as I got the chance to write I did, so here it is. I hope the chapter was worth the waiting._**

**_Thank you for all the support, keep reviewing!_**

**_Love,_**

**_Gabriella. _**


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